by nickwan
After extensively touring throughout the US, Canada, UK, and Australia for the past 3+ years, Bazan has crawled his way back into the studio to put out his first full-length LP, Curse Your Branches. Released today, Bazan’s consistancy for his Seattle-bred sound is only furthered by these 38 minutes of indie love. Never leaving the realm that he pioneered with Pedro the Lion years ago, Bazan only expanded the amount of instruments he could play and has implimented them all into this record, blending his sound he gathered from his Headphones project and the singer/songwriter style he also garnished in 2006 with his EP, Fewer Moving Parts. It’s hard to find much wrong with David Bazan, from his live show to this newest release, and maybe that is what is his biggest enemy… consistancy.
Years ago, coming up in the late 90′s, the term “slow-core” started popping up. This was used to describe bands who weren’t part of the alternative rock scene (composed of bands like The Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden, etc), nor were they moving along with the indie bands of the time (i.e. Jimmy Eat World, The Get Up Kids, etc). This music was a lot slower and a lot more… sigh… sad and depressing. Some classic pioneers other than Pedro the Lion of this unfortunate labelling of a genre would be, in no particular order, Carrissa’s Wierd (Seattle), early Death Cab for Cutie (Seattle), Elliott Smith (Portland), Rocky Votolato (Seattle), and to a somewhat further extent The Red House Painters (San Francisco). This music, slowcore, is nothing more but glorified slow songs that are pretty easy to get intimate with on an aural level. Usually not the most technically difficult music, the arrangement usually matches the root meaning of the song, as the song itself is mostly in form of a story of some sort. It’s not very common for a slowcore song to have little to no meaning.
Now, there are tons and tons of bands taking influence from these artists. We’ve seen what slowcore-electronica could become (e.g. The Postal Service, Headphones). That electro-style has been popular for the past decade and has yet to stop inflitrating every nook and cranny of the rock world. We’ve heard the gamut of bands the mainstream consider “emo”, from the very well known Dashboard Confessional to the very unrecognized Jeremy Enigk, this music has subtly stretched further than most of these artists have realized.
Coming back to this album, David Bazan has not sacraficed anything of his own style for this album. And this should stand as a testament to this music he has helped build; this album could just be the quintessential slowcore album. Three albums in this genre have really struck me as “impossible” or “too good”, Pedro the Lion’s Achilles’ Heel, Pedro the Lion’s Options, and Death Cab for Cutie’s The Photo Album. Curse Your Branches is close to topping at least one of those albums for me.
The album, song for song, is too consistant in the sound in my own honest opinion. This does two things for the record: 1) it solidifies it’s stance in the scene this music will be promoted towards and 2) fails to bring about any change for Bazan in terms of style or music in general. For someone who isn’t very into this type of music, or is trying to get into this type of music, it would be very easy to mistake the discography of Bazan’s work, from Pedro the Lion to now, as all the same band. Very unfortunately for Bazan, all three entities he has played under are very different. But not different enough. This, again, plays into holding his own style… however, how many times can you sing the same song differently? Minus the Bear suffered from that bug with their past two releases… there is only so many songs about having sex, beaches, and drinking one person can write until each song is the same. How many songs about questioning God, break ups, make ups, and the music industry can Bazan write?
The most dissenting songs from Bazan’s style are “Please, Baby, Please”, “When We Fall”, and “Bearing Witness”. Both songs have this beach-campfire vibe about them. I’d say Bazan has never wrote a song like this before, but for some reason… it doesn’t sound different from what he’s done before. It’s different enough for this album to stick out though. Also, whoever is the new bassist(s) for this album, you’re doing one hell of a job.
Two songs that I would consider “the best” of the album, “Heavy Breath” and “Curse Your Branches”. These songs really tie together every single thing Bazan is about. Synthesizers, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, a full band attitude, and a very vocally driven performance via lyrics in song. It’s hard to believe that any other people were playing instruments on these two songs since everything about these songs SCREAM “Bazanbazanbazan”.
Between my two favorite releases this year, Ace Enders and fun., David Bazan is close to topping the unofficial charts. This album is way lo-fi when it comes to production, probably not hitting on much other than mixing and mastering. The personnel on this record isn’t much more than Bazan, a few familiar friends, and the will to make the most perfect slowcore music right now.
This album is definitely a breath of fresh air in a place where the scene has been swooped on by musical-rock (fun., Forgive Durden, Say Anything), as well as… well, that other indie rock (Ace Enders, The Gaslight Anthem, Black Kids, Brand New etc). The next breath of fresh air could possibly be from one of my all-time favorite artist, Owen New Leaves. But that’s not until the 22nd.
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